


a new age

by Pitseleh



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 09:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8138905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitseleh/pseuds/Pitseleh
Summary: In another world, Solas meets Lavellan for the first time... after the events of Trespasser.





	1. art theory

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things I always liked about Dragon Age: Origins was how all potential wardens existed, but only the one you choose to play survives the prologue. I was playing around with that idea when I came up with this. Except, of course, instead of dying, they enter the stage at a different time.

Two weeks after the Inquisition disbands officially-- Solas doubts it's completely gone, knowing how Leliana operates and the sway she now holds-- he finds it necessary to rest. It is not that he is tired, not in the way mortal shadows of the People are often tired. He does not need sleep. But he needs rest, he needs a _respite_. From years of rebellion, decades of war, centuries of strategy, he knows his mind well enough. Sometimes distance is needed. 

He uses an Eluvian to go to a place that was once a grand library of knowledge. It was never on the crossroads, though once there had been talk of moving it. It was an eclectic place, and its proprietor had chosen to put it in the world of Waking, away from dreams and magic, purely for the irony of housing books on alternative magic in a world less, and yet still utterly, magical. In the end, the irony had saved it from being locked away forever... and utterly destroyed everything of value inside it. The scrolls and memories had all since rotted away, leaving only stone ruins of a time long passed. Solas finds it comforting nonetheless. There are few shrines to false deities, mostly puzzles and murals, some which he painted when he was still experimenting with ocher and hues that can no longer be found in the mortal world.

He sits there and he dreams, and when he is content with his dreams, he paints. Once, he would have observed his fellows, spoken to the Inquisitor, distracted himself in other ways. That time is gone.

So he paints. He paints what this place used to be, with gliding staircases, spirits overlapping slowly over currents of shimmering air, scholars arguing with beings of unimaginable wisdom, and then he hears it.

Someone is singing.

Solas knows this place, and knows it's not impossible that it's been found by others. It is, however, highly unlikely. There are traps, magical puzzles, riddles written in the tongue of the ancient Elvhen. Not only that, the decrepit library is remote, far from any settlements, human or elven. Why someone would come here, much less to _sing_ , Solas can't imagine.

He listens to the voice while he paints. Now that the fresco process has begun, he can't stop, or the plaster will dry wrong and the entire piece will be ruined. Solas is accustomed to splitting his energies, though, and it isn't as though he's being pulled into a heated debate. He is listening to someone sing in the belly of a library's long-dead corpse. Whenever the singing gets decidedly mediocre, he simply ignores it.

It's not that they're bad. And, honestly, Solas can hardly judge on the matter of music; his own attempts, centuries past, were much worse. And, he thinks while mixing another color into the wall, it's very likely this person has no clue that they've an audience. If they did, they'd likely be putting in more of a concerted effort. They sound distracted themselves, and often the voice-- female, Solas thinks, though it's low and the echoes distort it harshly-- will stop entirely, breaking into mumbling. The accent is Dalish, that's easy enough to figure. The words are the kind of mangled Elvhen Dalish often speak, so much so that it's nearly its own dialect at this point. All simple phrases with direct, blunt desires. Elvhen was once a truly poetic language, and now children mangle it with fumbling commands.

Sometimes the voice will stop, and Solas will assume that the traps have finally gotten his intruder, the holes in the floor have swallowed her up... but then she starts singing again, just as off-key as before. _Imagine that_ , he thinks with a chuckle. _A tone-deaf elf_.

The singing gets louder and louder, nearer and nearer, and finally it stops. He can feel the presence of another in the room with him, see her out of the corner of his eye, but he refuses to stop painting when he's so near finished. He's distantly grateful he wore his plain cloth-spun attire instead of the full lupine regalia his followers now expect.

The painting is completed, and he stands back to let it dry, studying it by veilfire. The hues and colors he chose all look best under a green tint, and he likes that little secret folded into the painting-- if anyone ever sees it, they won't truly see it as it was meant to be seen, not unless they know him well enough to light the wall correctly.

So no one will ever know.

That accomplished, he looks down from the scaffolding at his guest.

Yes, she's certainly Dalish. She has the rangy look many Dalish acquire from years of hard living, fear and bitterness. The dark blue markings on her face praise Mythal, but only to the minimal amount, with branches weaving out under her eyes and up prominent cheekbones. Her hair is unevenly cut, her eyes small and ratlike, her clothing dirty and threadbare even for a member of the Dalish.

He waits for her to speak. The Dalish do so love talking.

"It's very beautiful," she say, as though she's trying not to spook a wary animal. How must he look, to her?

"Thank you," he says. "Does your clan make art like this?" Best play the meek knife-ear in awe of her tattoos, all the better to escape forgotten.

But to his surprise, she scoffs. "My clan had one artist, who was also a habitual liar. He was mauled by a boar before I was marked. I'm more interested in where you learned to paint like that." She begins climbing the scaffolding, with no concern for... anything, really. Her eyes, moments ago so beady, are now bright and alive with hungry energy. "I've never seen a technique like this before- then again, that's hardly surprising, living in the forest. Is it a human technique? Or is it something you guessed from the old elves? I've seen a few murals similar to it, but they're all so old and cracked, it's impossible to figure it out how it was done. I figured it'd be simpler, not with all this- plaster, is that the word for it?"

These are all questions Solas has no real interest in answering. He doubts pretending to be meek will do him much good, so he tries to narrow the playing field. "Those are far too many questions for me to answer in one night."

She abruptly stops, and the hunger in her eyes is imperfectly hidden when she turns to meet him. "You're right." She holds out her hand in a gesture Solas doubts the Dalish know is an entirely human form of greeting. "Lavellan."

"Solas," Solas says, because, honestly, it's still a very common name in some circles. 'Pride of the Elvhen', of course. Lavellan, at least, seems unsurprised by it. 

"I'm sorry for burying you in questions. I wasn't expecting to find anyone here, and it's been a long while since I've spoken to anyone."

"Anyone at all?"

"I left my clan recently," she says with a bitter, tired smile. She taps her vallaslin. "Four months back."

"My apologies," Solas says, because he imagines it's what's expected of him.

"Don't be. We were only too happy to be rid of each other, believe me." The smile returns to her face, and she goes back to staring at the painting, clearly delighted in it. 

He wonders... and then, because he cannot see any reason why not, he voices his wonder: "Have you ever seen a painting by an elf before?"

"No, not really. Not a good one, not one that wasn't painted by a fool or an elf a thousand years dead. Elves... we don't make anything _new_ anymore, do we?"

"Clearly, you've not been in the cities much. Not all elves are servants." From what he's learned of his spies in the houses of nobles and merchants, it's something a city elf would say.

Lavellan freezes, and looks back to him with a worried expression. "You're right, of course. The _Dalish_... we don't make new things."

She sounds like she's apologizing. Why? 

"I always wanted to see how city elves lived," she mutters, "but my clan always talked me out of it."

Oh, that's why.

"Is that why you left," he asks, half-curious. "To join the elves in cities and towns?"

"It was for a lot of reasons," she says, maybe a little darkly. With a shrug, she turns back to the painting. "If I knew these sorts of things were waiting for me, I'd have left much sooner."

It occurs to him that she's not yet asked why he's down here, in the middle of an elvhen ruin, painting it and possibly defacing it. The entire thing is suspicious, but he can easily spin an explanation. The odd thing is that she hasn't _asked_ for one.

So he does instead.

"Why are you down here? I thought no one would be." Add a bit of flavor, yes, give his character some brightness. 

"I wanted to explore, not just..." she makes a motion with her hand that Sera was fond of when she felt people talked too much.

"Pontificate on Dalish superiority?" 

Lavellan grins. "So you've had run-ins with us before."

Solas shrugs, and Lavellan takes this for a joke and laughs, quick and surprised. It's... nice. Solas would be more of a fool than he already was, if he refused to admit he was lonely. This woman is certainly not anywhere near the sort of conversations he once had before the war, or with spirits of wisdom long passed from this world and the next, but... 

It's nice.

So he sits down, and begins to answer her questions about painting. They get into a long discussion on art, mostly with her asking questions and him answering to the best of his ability. She reveals herself to have little understanding of the stuff, but a fascination that runs deep regardless. She wants to know how he chose the composition of the painting, the brushwork and the colors, and he answers where he can. Her interest doesn't seem to be based in how he's an elf, but that he paints, or perhaps he's an elf that paints. 

In return, she's hesitant to give up information about herself. He can't tell if that's embarrassment over some dark past, or embarrassment due to her Dalish status, or something deeper. Eventually, though, he can pry some information from her.

"Oh, you heard that?" The tips of Lavellan's ears color with embarrassment. "I didn't know anyone was here..."

"The stone picked up the echoes well enough. Was it a Dalish song?"

"Our storyteller taught us. She only had two intact verses, though; I added the rest." She looks down a moment, clearly troubled. "She _hated_ that."

He nods, attempting to convey understanding, but she misinterprets him.

"That's not why I left. I- it was for a lot of reasons." It seems like a wound still healing.

Light begins to creep in through the cracks in the ceiling of the ruin, and Solas realizes it's morning. 

"Meet me here tomorrow?" Lavellan says, entirely unprompted. She must be lonelier than he thought.

Slowly, he stands. "No." He's surprised to find an actual expression of hurt in her eyes. "Next week."

Her smile isn't infectious, but he almost wishes it was.


	2. public policy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas cracks the riddle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really not good at writing 'vague' PCs who don't have a lot of deeper background features; this Lavellan is unapologetically mine.

He has the advantage on her, this time. It's a silly advantage, and he knows it; it doesn't matter if he wins, with her. He has no _goals_. 'Winning' isn't even a possibility, in the strictest sense. 

And yet, and yet.

She's suspicious, and that's a puzzle. Solas has never been able to resist mysteries. 

He doubts shes some covert agent from the Inquisition or the Qun. The Inquisitor wouldn't pick anyone associated with the Dalish for him to be interested in, and Qunari agents are generally subtler than this. No, if Lavellan is anything, she's something else entirely. A coincidence, strange and subtle, or someone's very poor attempts at espionage.

It's a riddle, and Solas endeavors to crack it. He doesn't return to the ruins at the time they agreed on, instead waiting an hour, watching through the Eluvian, wondering what she'll do. Will she leave? Will she stay?

She arrives early, giving him nearly an hour to observe her, and she spends that time doing... nothing suspect. But the chance to observe isn't wasted; from her movements, the way she mutters to herself, the way she looks around the room without anxiety or boredom, Solas discovers much. Most principally, he discovers a woman who is very, very accustomed to being alone.

He recognizes many of those tells from the way he holds himself, when he's not measuring his reactions for an audience.

Lavellan paces the room, hums to herself, and then she takes out charcoal and begins to doodle on the walls. It's crude and poor; clearly this is someone with little or no artistic experience. It takes Solas some time to even realize she's copying elements of his fresco. By then, it's far past time for him to make his appearance. He doesn't use the Eluvian, of course, but arrives on another nearby road, and goes through the front entrence of the ruins, with all its traps and riddles. They're in an old style, from the third Grand Empire, a time only a little after Solas had joined Mythal's court. The answers are simple, easily recognizable. It's hardly surprising a Dalish elf managed to worm her way through them.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he says when he arrives in the final chamber. Lavellan is wiping a large charcoal smudge off the wall, the only remaining evidence of her attempt at art. He gestures to it with a quizzical expression.

Lavellan looks embarrassed. "I was just messing around." The charcoal is all over her. 

"You were making a mess."

"Yeah, that's what I do," she says with a sigh, and wanders over to the fresco again. "I can't figure how you do it."

"What is your fascination with that painting, honestly?" Solas appreciates his works being, well, appreciated, of course he does, everyone does. This, though...

She shrugs. "You're interesting to talk to, so... things that you do are interesting."

Her interest, then, isn't because he's an elf, or because he paints, or because he's an elf that paints. It's because he's... interesting? Another troubling, suspicious sign; Solas has been cultivating a persona that would be nothing but dull, especially to the sharp and judgmental eyes of the Dalish.

"What do you do, when you're not painting?" She asks, keen as ever. "Your hands are rough-- are you a painter?"

It's easy to fall into old lies. "I'm a wanderer. I picked up the painting as a hobby."

She whistles, and he expects to find that, too, horribly off key. Instead, it's the first thing he's seen her do that she's succeeded in. "Pretty good for a hobby. Why do you wander?"

"Why do I wander?"

She shrugs. "Isn't there an old poem like that..." 

Solas can see, suddenly, what her angle is. She's trying to change the subject because he seemed disinclined to answer, possibly uncomfortable. Her odd stops and starts in the conversation, her prying and poking only to give up seconds later-- she's trying to make him comfortable. 

He can't remember the last time anyone's done that. Not unless they were currying favor, but to her, he's just some city elf. Yet, she seems to genuinely care what he thinks of her.

He knows he has her, then.

"I'll tell you why I wander," he says, "if you answer the same question."

This stops her flat. For a moment, she looks stricken, but she recovers fast. Too fast for someone who doesn't school their temperament. She's quicker, slier, than she lets on, but Solas is an old hand at this, a thousand years strong. He knows the signs, the tells, better than this little elf. She can't be more than three decades old. Likely less.

She sighs, slow. "I left my clan of my own volition. It was a small clan, and I didn't get on with most of them. I disappointed them all when I was very young, and we all never got over it. I finally left when they got enough hunters to get on without me."

He wonders what a young child could do to sour her chances with grown adults ten, twenty years on. It's clearly something she holds dear to her, though, so he doesn't pry just now. He'll find out soon enough. An advantage of endless age is endless patience.

Lavellan looks at him expectantly.

"I didn't wish to go to the Circle," he says, "so I left. I've been wandering ever since."

She gapes. "You're a _mage_?" It's clearly not something she's been expecting, and all veneer of calm breaks. It makes sense, he supposes; he hasn't needed a staff in some time, so he doesn't carry one. 

Solas nods, slow. Calm is always an advantage. "Yes. A mage." And, perhaps because he's nostalgic for the old lie, "a dreamer."

Her eyes are wide, and she doesn't say anything. She hasn't moved away in fear, but her back has straightened, her posture improved. She folds her hands before her.

"You seem surprised."

"Well- you just..." She shrugs. "You're not like Dalish mages."

"And how is that?"

She sits back and looks him up and down, studying him. She's done it before, of course, but never so obviously. "Do you know how Dalish clans work?"

"Haphazardly, so far as I'm aware."

She sighs, but it doesn't seem to be with offense. "Clans are lead by their Keeper, and her First, and the people in training in case the First falls, and the Elders."

Solas nods, still listening.

"So it's all a lot of people who..." She seems to be struggling for something to say. "Are separate."

Now, he thinks he understands. "They have a vested interest in keeping power at their doorstep."

She sighs. "Yeah. And it's almost all mages."

Solas had never thought what it would be like, to be an elf without magic. What a pitiful waste. "You expected a mage to be a tyrant."

Lavellan blinks. "Oh- no. I've heard of clans like that; if mine had been, it would have been... not easier, but simpler. My Keeper, she tried her best. She was smart and a good teacher. She taught me almost everything I know."

Solas thinks he sees it now. "And yet, here you are, without any magic I can sense."

She hangs her head, and sounds genuinely abashed. "I know." And then she regains herself, looking up at him with hunched shoulders. "I was supposed to be a mage. My parents were. My grandparents. My mother was Keeper before her sister took over, and she raised me after they died."

The pieces click easily into place. "And then, after a lifetime of training, you were told you weren't good enough."

Lavellan crumples a little, but she keeps her eyes on Solas. "Now you know my secret." She holds a finger up to her lips, playful to hide her discomfort. "Don't tell."

It's a joke, friendly and kind. He doesn't smile, but it warms his mood, just slightly. "I won't tell a soul. I haven't a soul to tell."

"It must be nice, being a wanderer your whole life." She says, changing the subject just a hair. "You get to decide everything about yourself, what matters, what doesn't."

"It's not as romantic as it sounds. I spend a fair amount of time in ruins surrounded by spiders."

"But that sounds perfect," she says, smiling softly. "Figuring things out on your own; I always wanted to do that."

Solas supposes that's the crux of the matter. She's suspicious in the way all incongruous things are suspicious. She sticks out, but it's because she's naturally odd. Her secrets are personal, not pivotal. 

"I know another ruin, not far from here. I could show it to you." He wants to test his theory, see if she'll react genuinely.

She does. "Next week?"

"Tomorrow."


End file.
